Egg Freezing: Freedom or Burden?
The McGill Research Group on Health and Law invite you to an interdisciplinary panel with Professor Vardit Ravitsky, Dr. Karen Buzaglo, and Dr. Katie Hammond, who will discuss the legal, ethical and medical debates surrounding social egg freezing from a Canadian viewpoint. The panel will be chaired by Professor Alana Klein.
This event is eligible for inclusion as 1.5 hours of continuing legal education as reported by members of the Barreau du Québec.
VARDIT RAVITSKY is Associate Professor at the Bioethics Program, School of Public Health, University of Montreal and Director of Ethics and Health at the Center for Research on Ethics. She is President of the International Association of Bioethics, member of CIHR’s Standing Committee on Ethics and of the Advisory Board of CIHR’s Institute of Genetics. Her research focuses on the ethics of genomics and reproduction and is funded by CIHR, FRQSC, SSHRC, and Genome Canada. She published over 140 articles and commentaries on bioethical issues.
DR. KAREN BUZAGLO (MDCM 2004) graduated from McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine and pursued her residency at McGill in Obstetrics & Gynecology. She became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 2011, then completed a fellowship in Gynecologic Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility (GREI) at Université de Montréal with Royal College certification in 2013. Dr. Buzaglo is co-medical director of Procrea Fertilité, part of IntegraMed, the largest network of fertility clinics in North America. She is immediate past chair of the Fertility Preservation special interest group of CFAS and vice-president of Fertile Future, a non-profit organization that offers financial assistance for fertility preservation for cancer patients. In 2019, she launched Fertilité & Féminité, located at Clinique Medic Elle, promoting active optimization of one’s reproductive, sexual and post-menopausal health providing the most advanced technologies in these areas. She is a passionate advocate for women taking charge of their own health throughout their lives.
KATIE HAMMOND (BCL/LLB 2019) is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Research Group on Health and Law in the Faculty of Law at McGill University, and a visiting scholar with the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School. She completed her PhD in Sociology with the Reproductive Sociology Research Group at the University of Cambridge as a Commonwealth Trust scholar, and an MPhil in Gender Studies as a Gates Cambridge scholar. Her work explores infertility and assisted reproductive technologies, and their resulting markets and regulation. She has been involved with policy development in the area of reproduction for organizations such as the World Health Organization, where she was involved with organizing, and participated in the consultation for the WHO’s first ever glossary and guidelines on infertility. In particular, she specializes in the areas of egg, sperm and embryo donation, surrogacy, and egg freezing.